children

It was an ordinary Monday afternoon when some of my colleagues and I at the United Nations Women’s Headquarters in New York suddenly disappeared from our offices in unison. We rushed to a small conference room at lunch with determination in our pace and long lists of ideas and demands in our notepads. After many […]

BY STEVEN OLENDER When a man promised to love and take care of ten-year-old Withelma “T” Ortiz Walker Pettigrew, she thought her luck had finally changed. Born to drug-addicted parents, T spent her life bouncing in and out of foster care. In ten short years, she lived through 14 placements; several unsuccessful returns home; and […]

BY JENN MENN This piece appeared in our 2015 print journal. You can order your copy here. Introduction to the foster care crisis In the whirl of a brief phone call, a social worker’s car doors shutting in the driveway, and signing a custody paper like a FedEx package, I became mom to three little strangers. […]

BY CASEY SCHUTTE The law does not trust them to vote. It forbids them from watching certain movies in the theater or signing up for a credit card on their own. Consuming alcohol is certainly off limits, as is smoking cigarettes. Society proscribes certain activities for these people because, the thinking goes, they lack the […]